Make a mesh inside another mesh appear over the the outer mesh

Question

I'm trying to make an effect similar to this but in blender instead of unity :

The darker inner part is a cylinder which is inside a larger cylinder with inverted normals and a solid blue material, which makes a solid blue outline around the smaller cylinder. How can I achieve this in blender?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/70576/transparency-masking-see-through-an-outer-sphere-and-see-inner-sphere-in-true/70619#70619 — Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Feb 25 '20 at 15:13

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 25 '20 at 12:41

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For Cycles I use this setup (not mine, but I can't remember where i found it) :

You can also use Freestyle, it's a different approach but gives a lot of control over the edge style, thickness etc.

answered Feb 25 '20 at 12:41

thibsert

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 25 '20 at 12:32

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Using Eevee you can turn on 'backface culling' for the outer (larger) mesh:

answered Feb 25 '20 at 12:32

lemon

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Hmm. I'd prefer to use cycles for this. is it possible using cycles? – Mdot Feb 25 '20 at 12:35
@Mdot I don't think so since Cycles is physically accurate... However you can render only the inside object with transparent background in a separate view layer and add it back with an "alpha over" node in the compositing workspace. If you only want the solid outline you should look into "freestyle" strokes – Gorgious Feb 25 '20 at 12:43

Make a mesh inside another mesh appear over the the outer mesh

2 Answers2